Global Lives Project - grassroots project aims to document lives around the globe - meet the first 10

From the site:

"Mission Statement

Our mission is to collaboratively build a video library of human life experience that reshapes how we as both producers and viewers conceive of cultures, nations and people outside of our own communities.

2010 Artist's Statement - from our Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Exhibit

Framed by the arc of the day and conveyed through the intimacy of video, we have slowly and faithfully captured 24 continuous hours in the lives of 10 people from around the world. They are screened here in their own right, but also in relation to one another.

There is no narrative other than that which is found in the composition of everyday life, no overt interpretations other than that which you may bring to it.

By extending the long take to a certain extreme and infusing it with the spirit of cinema verité, we invite audiences to confer close attention onto other worlds, and simultaneously reflect upon their own. The force and depth of human difference and similarity are revealed in this process. Gaps which mark cultural divides feel, at once, both wider and narrower. This sense - that we, as humans, are both knowable and unknowable, fundamentally different as well as the same - opens a space for dialogue.

Sometimes projects with the simplest premises are the most complicated to execute, and this can be said for Global Lives.

Hundreds of volunteers from around the world make up our collective. Some are filmmakers and photographers, others are programmers and engineers, some are architects and designers, others are students and scholars - all are everyday people in their own contexts; each has participated according to his or her own motivations. They have donated, quite literally, thousands of hours towards bringing this project into being. This installation, our world premiere, offers us an opportunity to thank them, along with the generous communities that collaborated with us in each of these shoots.

This project is designed to remain a work-in-progress. Our volunteers are subtitling all 240 hours of footage in their original languages and translatng them into English and beyond. This will form the basis for our online, participatory library of human life experience - the other major venue for our work. We continue to accept new footage for our expanding archive - fresh additions to an evolving visual conversation."

The Unveiling of The Digital Flesh | The Creators Project compiles 3D facial scans to create a "composite 'supreme being'"

From the description:

"When The Creators Project was launched this past June, creators Radical Friend (Kirby McClure and Julia Grigorian) conceived of an enduring “organism” to commemorate the birth. This organism is an ever-evolving amorphous figure composed of thousands of 3D facial scans collected from all over the globe at our launch parties in NYC, London, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Beijing. Attendees in each city would add to the organism’s DNA by submitting a facial scan, and between events the organism would incubate and grow in its online “womb.” The installation culminated in a birthing séance in Beijing this past September, at which point a composite “supreme being” was welcomed into the world...."

Read the full post:

http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/the-unveiling-of-the-digital-flesh#

Beautiful playful interactive site from NFB: Commarts Webpick of the week - Sacrée Montagne

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From commarts.com

"The National Film Board launched this multimedia ode to Montréal’s Mount Royal; the interactive documentary explores the opinions of people who visit the mountain.

Through an interactive narrative, Sacrée Montagne highlights the persistence of the sacred in a secular society by exploring the mountain’s symbolic sites and the rituals observed on it. An immersive experience, that allows visitors to literally plunge into the subject, it engages people to contribute to the site through photos, voice messages, social networks and comments.

Since the entire experience is based on physical areas of the mountain, instead of a traditional navigation users can choose their own path—allowing them to discover the content slowly. There are 7 main sections on the site, the first one representing the mountain as a whole, in 360-degrees, the others representing different physical sections of it: the Angel Statue, the paths/forest, the cemeteries, the Oratory, Beaver Lake and the Cross...."

Read full post on commarts.com:

If you haven't played this yet..."Rotoscoping an Energy Crisis: Exploring the World of Collapsus"

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Excerpt:

By Michael Andersen, originally posted at ARGNet

"In March of 2010, the Dutch broadcasting company VPRO released the documentary Energy Risk as part of its Future Affairs programming. The Dutch-language documentary explored the impending transition from fossil fuel to alternative energy sources.

Recognizing that the average documentary viewer is over the age of 55, the network approached SubmarineChannel to create a more engaging experience that would appeal to younger audiences. Tommy Pallotta was brought on board to direct the experience, and the Collapsus experience was born.

Staying true to the project’s documentary roots, Collapsus presents a global narrative that plays out in the near-future. Told through the eyes of activist vlogger Vera and a cast of supporting characters, Collapsus depicts a complex world of profiteering, geo-political maneuvering and conspiracy revolving around dwindling oil reserves.

Stylistically, the experience combines live-action film with rotoscoped scenes that should be familiar to viewers of Pallotta’s previous projects, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Pallotta notes that “we settled on a hybrid of live action and animation as an aesthetic choice, but also one made for time and budget. The story takes place all over the world so we had to find a way to tell a global story that didn’t show the limitations we had....”

Read the full post:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/exploring-the-world-of-collapsus-with-d...

Very Cool: Interactive TilePuzzle 'incorporates multi-channel video'

This interactive video installation incorporates multi-channel video into a tilepuzzle interface. One or multiple images are broken up into tiles, mixed, and then projected on to a life-sized tile puzzle. The user may then try to “solve” the puzzle by moving the tiles to recreate a new face. The installation can be used for interactive storytelling. Made by Christine Q. Nguyen, Amy Chien and Rune Skjoldborg Madsen.

txteagle | mobile crowdsourcing via regional SMS campaigns #DIY10

txteagle

virtualworkforce

Harness the capacity of 2 billion people in over 80 countries to accomplish work with unprecedented speed, scale and quality.

Overview from the site:

"txteagle helps companies increase productivity, reduce expenses and gain new insights by harnessing the power of a massive, low cost workforce in the developing world.

The company has developed a patent-pending platform that is enabling approximately 2 billion mobile phone subscribers in 80 countries to earn money or airtime by doing work on a phone or desktop computer.

Major applications of the txteagle platform include business process outsourcing (e.g., forms processing, translation, audio transcription, fact checking) and local knowledge gathering (e.g., business information, investment/market research, points of interest).

Founded by former MIT faculty member Dr. Nathan Eagle and Dr. Ben Olding from Harvard’s Statistics Department, txteagle has raised funding from top-tier investors that include Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Flywheel Ventures and Esther Dyson."

wow. Outsourcing Texas border security: BlueServo - Trebor Scholz speaking at #DIY10

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